Our Week in the Forest...

It has been a week of celebration being awarded the Queens award for innovation! This week our Wandsworth site was nominated to be visited by the Evening Standard newspaper that was printed on Thursday 26th April – see page 3!

Over at Paradise this week the children busily worked together to build an Ice Cream stall and shop, which set the children’s imaginations alight for role play. “Get your ice creams!” and “Buy any flavour you want’, they beckoned, ‘We have chocolate, strawberry - any flavour you like!”. Some of the more exotic flavours experienced were blueberry, mango and Babycino!! The Wimbledon prices of £100 a pop was a bit pricey but what can you say - they tasted good!

Throughout the day the children were really keen to listen to stories or sit with their own book and make up the words to their own. So, in the afternoon, a group of six children created their own story. Each child would say a sentence, then as a group we would all listen back. It was fascinating how the story had a beginning, middle and an end. Also, it was deeply impressive how our Little Forest Folkers managed to resolve the issue of working with the sentence said before to continue the story on. The children loved to see their story written down and then read aloud to the group.

The role of stories in the children’s play continued over at the windmill site! As ever, Little Red Riding hood was a popular book which instigated a fun game of run and chase. This week the children were very interested in song bird book - the book is interactive and produces the call of local birds. With the onset of spring, the children have been noticing more bird song and interesting noises around the forest. All of a sudden a knocking sound rang through the forest! “What’s that?!”, gasped a child. “That is a woodpecker”, responded another. A group of 5 then stalked quickly around the forest for the next half an hour. “There it is! The woodpecker!”, they would call with a little chuckle every time they heard the noise! So we questioned the children as to what the woodpecker might be doing? “Well it’s the Daddy looking for ants and worms”. “Hmm I think it’s the Mummy making the home to put all the eggs in!”

The theme of nests and eggs was extended on our adventure walk one afternoon. One eagle eyed adventurer noticed that they could only see one swan! So we searched and searched for the other. Eventually we saw her - “She’s sitting on her nest!” and so she was. “She’s going to make eggs!”. It’s incredibly exciting to think that over the next month cygnets, gosling and chicks will be scattered all across the lake which will be a magnet for our adventure walkers!